But as the bells began to ring out the year that had been his
ruin Glenn had drawn her close, tenderly, passionately, and yet strangely,
too.
"Carley, look and listen!" he had whispered.
Under them stretched the great long white flare of Broadway, with its
snow-covered length glittering under a myriad of electric lights. Sixth
Avenue swerved away to the right, a less brilliant lane of blanched snow.
The L trains crept along like huge fire-eyed serpents. The hum of the
ceaseless moving line of motor cars drifted upward faintly, almost drowned
in the rising clamor of the street. Broadway's gay and thoughtless crowds
surged to and fro, from that height merely a thick stream of black figures,
like contending columns of ants on the march. And everywhere the monstrous
electric signs flared up vivid in white and red and green; and dimmed and
paled, only to flash up again.
Ring out the Old! Ring in the New! Carley had poignantly felt the sadness
of the one, the promise of the other. As one by one the siren factory
whistles opened up with deep, hoarse bellow, the clamor of the street and
the ringing of the bells were lost in a volume of continuous sound that
swelled on high into a magnificent roar.
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